Nepal riot police on Thursday utilized rattan sticks, tear gas, and water cannons to disperse thousands of protesters calling for the reinstatement of the monarchy abolished 15 years ago. The “Citizens’ Campaign” demonstrators argue that successive governments, established after the abolition of the monarchy as part of a pact concluding a Maoist insurgency, have failed to fulfill commitments to uplift one of the world’s poorest nations.
Jitendra Basnet, the top official in the city administration of Kathmandu, where public protests are banned, stated, “Police only tried to contain a huge anarchic crowd of protesters.” Some police officers were injured by stones thrown by protesters, according to Basnet.
Durga Prasai, coordinator of the Citizens’ Campaign, noted that about 10 protesters were injured, two critically, in the altercation. Expressing the group’s objective, he stated, “We want the republican system abolished and the monarchy to be restored,” announcing plans to persist in their agitation and call for a general strike in Kathmandu on Friday, home to about four million people.
In 2008, a specially elected assembly abolished the 239-year-old monarchy under the terms of an accord ending a Maoist insurgency. The insurgency claimed 17,000 lives between 1996 and 2006, establishing a federal republic. However, political instability has plagued Nepal since, with over 10 changes of government, impeding economic development and prompting millions of young people to seek employment primarily in Malaysia, South Korea, and the Middle East.
The current Prime Minister, former Maoist rebel chief Pushpa Kamal Dahal, also known as Prachanda, leads a coalition with the centrist Nepali Congress party. Gyanendra, the last king of Nepal, now lives as a commoner with his family in Kathmandu.
